Stewart takes 3rd straight at DIS

DAYTONA BEACH -- Tony Stewart is almost money in the bank when it comes to the February NASCAR Nationwide race at Daytona International Speedway.

On Saturday in the DRIVE4COPD 300, Stewart continued his dominance in this race, beating Carl Edwards and Kevin Harvick across the finish line to win this race for the third straight year.

"I'm happy with our day. That's probably one of the most dominant cars I've ever had at Daytona," Stewart said. "We felt like we had a great car out there today."

Stewart, driving a one-race Nationwide deal for Kevin Harvick Inc., joined Dale Earnhardt, Junior and Bill Dennis as the only drivers to win this race three straight times over its 52-year existence.

Due to qualifying being rained out Saturday, Stewart made the 43-car field because he won the race one year prior -- although his lucky qualifying order draw would have got him in -- and he took full advantage of the opportunity.

"Tony and I talked before the race and I told him if everything went right I didn't think they were going to be able to beat both our cars," Harvick said.

He started out of the 32nd position, slowly worked his way to the front and led the final 25 circuits of the race to secure his fifth win in the last six years in this event.

The last driver to have this kind of dominance in this race was Earnhardt, who won this race five straight times from 1990-94.

"It's always pretty cool to be able to know that we can do what we've done. It's always an honor to win at Daytona," said Stewart, who has 15 career Daytona wins. "After 15 of them now there's one that I haven't won. I would trade some of them for a Sunday race."

Stewart had been at the top of the speed charts in previous practice sessions so the fact that he got to the front and stayed there was no surprise.

On the race's final lap, Justin Allgaier, who was running second, and Edwards appeared to be stacked up for a run at Stewart, but Allgaier fell back to fourth while Edwards and Harvick raced by.

At the beginning of the 120-lap sprint all eyes were on polesitter Kyle Busch and Danica Patrick, who was making her NASCAR Nationwide debut, but when those two were collected in separate incidents, Stewart pulled to the forefront.

Busch limped home with a finish of 18th and Patrick's race ended 68 laps into the event when she was involved in a 12-car incident. The damage to her No. 7 Chevrolet left her with a finish of 35th.

The race also saw four members of the Wallace family -- Mike, Kenny, Steve and Chrissy -- competing in a Nationwide race for the first time, but Chrissy's day ended on the opening lap when she wrecked exiting Turn 4.